According to statistics collected by Jon Peddie Research (JPR), GPU shipment numbers for Q4 2008 were just 72.35 million units. That represents a significant drop off from one year prior when GPU makers shipped 100.5 million units, and an even bigger drop from Q3 2008, which shipped 111.26 million GPUs.

All graphics vendors felt the pinch, but ATI appears to have been hit a little bit harder, giving up some market share to Nvidia. As of Q4 2008, Nvidia held a 31 percent share compared to ATI's 19 percent. Intel still bested them both with a leading 48 percent share of the market.

"The fourth quarter is usually a positive quarter for the computer industry," Dr. Jon Peddie said in a statement. "There has obviously been some inventory problems in the quarter as sales failed to live up to the optimistic expectations of the third quarter, 2008. Vendors were bracing for a slower than usual quarter due to economic factors, but performance this quarter was surprisingly low. Put simply, the market stalled in the fourth quarter."

Peddie noted a strong forecast for the second half of 2009, but cautioned that it would come after the worst Q1 and Q2 decline since 2000, DailyTech reports.

Stop the presses! (Ok, maybe not). We wanted to let you know that Best of the Best, our comprehensive list of our favorite PC hardware components, has just been updated and overhauled with new categories and parts that you’ll need to consider for your next PC build or upgrade.

In addition to three new processor categories (Extreme, $500, and $250), we’ve listed our pick for the top Core i7 motherboard. The budget through high-end GPU lineup as also been refreshed, and we now make two hard drive recommendations based on performance and capacity.

Many a hardware-encrypted disk has crossed the path of the consumer market lately, but they’ve universally been a questionable investment. All the encryption systems have been proprietary, and you’d be hard pressed to find someone that’s looking to store all their valuable data on a system that can’t be read in a few years down the line.

Thankfully, the Trusted Computing Group has just announced that (almost) every drive maker has agreed on 128-bit encryption for all SSDs and HDDs. The major vendors, such as Fujitsu, Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, Western Digital, IBM, Wave Systems, LSI and Ulink Technology have all hopped on board.

With any luck we in the consumer market will be looking at simpler disk encryption sometime very soon.

Thanks to Samsung, the first 4GB DDR3 chip has been made available to the world, making them the first to double the maximum capacity of DRAM modules. This advance will allow Samsung to offer high-end, dual-die devices that will support up to 32GB of RAM.

Born from 50 nm process technology the new 4GB monster chips will be made available to servers first, followed by DIMMs fit for desktop computers and then notebook size SODIMMs.

These chips will run at only 1.35 volts, which is 20 percent less than the usual 1.5 volt DDR3 memory that you’ll find on the market today. Samsung hasn’t made any mention yet about the pricing or availability of these chips.

From start to finish, it takes Foster less than four minutes to complete the project and run a short demonstration. Of course, that's with a cardboard box - skilled modders will want to invest a bit more time coming up with custom enclosure.

If all you want a secondary display for is to keep track of your IM conversations, stock quotes, emails, and other tasks of that nature, Buffalo may have just what you're looking for with its new 7-inch display.

As the model number suggests, the FTD-W71USB LCD display plugs into a USB port and offers an 800x480 resolution, 300 nits brightness, a 500:1 contrast ratio, 25ms response time, and a wide viewing angle (vertical: 120 degrees, left and right: 140 degrees). Buffalo says you can rotate the display for either vertical or horizontal viewing, and can also be attached to a tripod stand for use with digital cameras by removing the stand.

If you really want to go hog-wild, Buffalo says you can use up to six units at the same time, making it possible to devote an entire display to every Skype conversation you might have going or, well, whatever else you might require six pint-sized displays.

As the NAND flash memory market slowly stabilizes in the later half of this year, it’s expected that SSDs will take over as the primary source of storage for computers industry-wide.

According to research firm DRAMeXchange, the oversupply of NAND flash chips is currently weakening the global SSD market, and is scheduled to balance out. Once this balance happens, the price gap between the HDDs we all currently know and love and the SSDs we all fantasize about and desire will close, ultimately causing a HD-to-SSD replacement cycle that was delayed thanks to the worldwide economic crisis.

Reportedly many computer manufacturers have been preparing for the transition. Many have begun to include SSDs in their laptops, but many desktops are beginning to feature them as well.

Yesterday AMD announced that they had no plans to replace their aging Geode chip. Its low power consumption made it an ideal candidate for the XO laptops, but now the future for this deal remains uncertain.

“There are no plans for a follow-on product to today's available AMD Geode LX products, but we expect to make this very successful processor available to customers as long as the market demands,” stated Phil Hughes, a spokesman with AMD.

Reportedly AMD is working closely with OLPC to remain the chipmaker for the XO-2 laptop. But, it is expected that given their lack of next-generation low power consumption chips, it will be difficult.

Confirming an earlier rumor that Western Digital had been nearing the release of a 2TB internal hard drive, the HDD maker is now producing and shipping the record capacity HDD. However, the new drive is so far only available through Mwave Australia.

The 2TB drive carries Western Digital's GreenPower moniker, an eco-friendly designation WD claims represents a 4-5 watt savings over standard desktop drives. According to Western Digital's product page, the new drive sips up to 7.4W during read/write operations, 4W at idle, and 0.97W during sleep or standby. Other specs for the WD20EADS include a 7200RPM spindle speed and 32MB of cache.

The drive sells for AU$378, which converts to about $250USD. No word yet on U.S. availability or pricing.

In the past, the AMD Phenom II has been overclocked to an extremely impressive 5 GHz. And while this was extremely impressive, it would seem that AMD wouldn’t want to be outdone.

AMD’s own Pete Hardman and Sami Makinen were able to overclock an AMD Phenom II to a blazing 6.5GHz, at an operating temperature of –230 degrees Celsius using liquid nitrogen and liquid helium as their cooling agents.

Should you be interested in seeing the whole process play out, be sure and check out the video here (and, as is usual with videos of this nature, prepare your ears for some awful trance music).